Nature of hedge fund management start-up industry is changing

The CEO of a regulatory hosting platform talks to Opalesque about his industry's ups and downs, the changing nature of fund management start-ups, and how managers are reacting to Brexit.

The regulatory hosting industry had been booming for the last three years in the UK, according to Joe Vittoria, CEO at Mirabella Financial Services, a London-based regulatory hosting platform. And the reason is in the delay in gaining FCA authorisation for new firms.

Mirabella, a wholly owned Cordium subsidiary, enables firms to operate quickly under a regulatory licence by extending its own regulatory permissions to its clients.
It has a regulatory compliance team and a risk management team. Cordium fulfils all other functions.

However, "this speed-to-market based boom for hosting firms is going to end fairly soon because the FCA (the UK's Financial Conduct Authority) is now approving new firms much more quickly, and the really big benefit of renting a license quickly is no longer there," he tells Opalesque.

A year ago, it would take 23 weeks to be be assigned a case officer; and that was just the start of the authorisation process. Now, case officers are assigned in two to eight weeks. All in all, "it takes around three ......................